Marty Fujita

Background

Fujita was born in 1954, in the United States.

Education

Fujita received a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1986. Her doctoral studies focused on the evolution, ecology, and behavior of bats.

Career

While a research associate at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, Fujita received a fellowship grant from Bat Conservation International (BCI), which allowed her to study flying foxes. During research work in Southeast Asia, she conducted seminars and gave lectures and press conferences to help raise awareness about the need for bat conservation. In Jakarta, Indonesia, Dr. Emil Salim, minister for population and environment, was so impressed with Fujita's program that he recommended she visit East Java to research the bat population near Surabaya. Her subsequent trip culminated in an important bat roost receiving protection by East Java's government. Her efforts have also reached Indonesia and Malaysia, where officials there have shown interest in bat conservation projects.

Along with Gavan Daws, Fujita is the author of Archipelago: The Islands of Indonesia: From the Nineteenth-Century Discoveries of Alfred Russel Wallace to the Fate of Forests and Reefs in the Twenty-first Century. The book follows the life of nineteenth-century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who simultaneously with and independently of Charles Darwin developed the theories of evolution and natural selection.

A self-educated man, one of eight children of a failed businessman, Wallace became a teacher and land surveyor before traveling to South America in 1848. In the Amazon, he drew maps, collected and documented rare species, and pondered the question "What are the circumstances which render certain rivers and mountain ranges the limits of numerous species, while others not?" After four years, Wallace returned to England, then in 1854 headed for the Malay Archipelago, where he spent eight years exploring the islands and pondering the mystery of the origin of species. In 1858, stricken again with malaria, he began thinking about sickness and survival.

It was noted that Fujita and Daws arrange their book in the order Wallace visited the Malay islands, support their text with period maps and excellent photographs, and include excerpts from Wallace's 1869 publication, The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orangutan, and the Bird of Paradise.

Achievements

• Fujita is best known as the author of Archipelago: The Islands of Indonesia: From the Nineteenth-Century Discoveries of Alfred Russel Wallace to the Fate of Forests and Reefs in the Twenty-first Century. The book provides an engaging, if brief, overview of rich and multifaceted topics.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Archipelago: Islands of Indonesia

    (The Indonesian archipelago is a land of timeless natural ...)

    1999

Membership

• 

  Fellow

  American Association for the Advancement of Science , United States

Connections

colleague:

Gavan Daws

References

• Contemporary Authors Volume 221
  2004